Childcare has long been a priority issue for women's rights advocates in
the United States, yet the United States continues to compare unfavorably
to other industrialized nations that extend childcare services and
other supports to assist families with young children. Provisions of the
Children's Rights Convention, as well as language in CEDAW and the ICCPR,
suggest that childcare should be viewed through a human rights framework
rather than the more limited framework of domestic law. This article
focuses on the Children's Rights Convention, analyzing the Convention's
impact on childcare in ratifying countries. In particular, the article
analyzes childcare policies of Australia, Finland, France and Sweden,
while also reviewing exchanges between the Committee on the Rights of the
Child and less industrialized countries. The authors conclude that framing
childcare as a human rights concern might shift the internal politics
of the issue by energizing advocates as well as enlisting new sources
of pressure to combat this aspect of the US policy of exceptionalism.

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Additional Information

ISSN

1085-794X

Print ISSN

0275-0392

Pages

pp. 689-719

Launched on MUSE

2003-08-05

Open Access

No

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Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.